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Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you

(rachelbythebay.com)
569 points todsacerdoti | 6 comments | 05 Jan 25 01:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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swyx ◴[05 Jan 25 02:41 UTC] No.42599320[source]▶
this is exactly the sort of idealistic post that appeals to HN and nobody else. i dont have a problem with that apart from when technologists try to take these "back to basics" stuff to shame the substacks and the company blogs out there that have to be more powered by economics than by personal passion.

its -obvious- things are mostly "better"/can be less "annoying" when money/resources are not a concern. i too would like to spend all my time in a world with no scarcity.

the engineering challenge is finding alignments where "better for reader" overlaps with "better for writer" - as google did with doubleclick back in the day.

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MathMonkeyMan ◴[05 Jan 25 03:01 UTC] No.42599406[source]▶
The author isn't trying to profit from the reader's attention; it's just a personal blog. An ad-based business would. Neither is right or wrong, but the latter is distinctly annoying.
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NotYourLawyer ◴[05 Jan 25 03:56 UTC] No.42599639[source]▶
Ad-based businesses are indeed wrong and immoral.
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StressedDev ◴[05 Jan 25 06:50 UTC] No.42600206[source]▶
Ad-based businesses exist because a lot of people (including many on this forum) refuse to pay for anything. During the late 1990s/early 2000s, people hated paying for anything and demanded that everything on the Internet should be free. Well, that led to the vast surveillance machine which powers Google, Facebook, and every ad-tech business out there. They need surveillance because it lets them serve more relevant ads and more relevant ads make more money.

The bottom line is if you hate ad-based businesses, start paying for things.

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1. mft_ ◴[05 Jan 25 12:06 UTC] No.42601253[source]▶
A personal take is that ad-based businesses exist because there’s no secure widespread reliable approach for micropayments (yet?).

The mean value of adverts on a page is in the order of a tiny fraction of a cent per reader, which is presumably enough for the businesses that continue to exist online. If it was possible to pay this amount directly instead, and have an ad-free experience, I suspect many would do so, as the cumulative amount would usually be negligible. Yet so far, no-one’s figured it out.

(I should mention, there are very strong reasons why it’s difficult to figure out currently, but AIUI these are rooted in the current setup of global payments and risk management by credit card companies.)

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2. BlueTemplar ◴[06 Jan 25 00:58 UTC] No.42606490[source]▶
Flattr 2.0 (and Brave ?) got pretty close.
3. carlosjobim ◴[06 Jan 25 13:21 UTC] No.42610329[source]▶
Is there anything that indicates that customers want micropayments?

Music and video streaming services are syndicating content from millions of creators into single subscription services. Why is it so impossible to make mega conglomerates for textual content? Why is nobody doing this?

Right now, creators are forced to make YouTube videos, because that's their most viable path to getting paid for their work. Why does it have to be this way, when a lot of what they do would be better as text instead of as a talking head?

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4. subswithads ◴[07 Jan 25 02:46 UTC] No.42618616[source]▶
I reject that idea, simply because companies will then offer microservice access and STILL put ads on them. Sure, youtube and spotify will disable them for you. But for every one of those we have a netflix and its dark side cohort.
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5. mft_ ◴[07 Jan 25 16:38 UTC] No.42624326[source]▶
Interesting question.

I guess the truth is that the large subscription 'streaming' services (Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, etc.) are effectively micropayment systems, just not quite as transparent and/or direct as the concept I'd envisioned.

As to why there's no 'Spotify for newspapers/magazines/blogs', I don't know. We're definitely not the first to consider the question. Maybe the economics (too few customers?) doesn't make sense? Maybe there's resistance to it amongst socially- and politically-connected owners and journalists who like their position in society? Maybe because it would presumably require centralisation (in terms of where and how it was consumed, akin to using the Spotify app to listen to music) and ultimately commoditisation of the media? Maybe the modern drift away from reading and longer-form media makes it unattractive, leading to a quality drift to the bottom?

6. mft_ ◴[07 Jan 25 16:39 UTC] No.42624339[source]▶
Fair point, as seen with Netflix and Amazon Prime video.